Ye Wenjie

In 1966, at Tsinghua University, Ye watches her father, physicist Ye Zhetai, beaten to death at a Cultural Revolution struggle session. She is sent to a labor camp in Inner Mongolia, turns down a deal that would save her and ends up recruited to Red Coast, a secret military base. Bit by bit she realizes the project isn't about weapons. It's an attempt to talk to life beyond Earth.

Ye discovers that the Sun can amplify radio signals. Her superior forbids the test because of the "Red Sun" symbolism tied to Mao, and she sends the message anyway. Around the same time she meets a young environmentalist, Mike Evans, and confronts the man who killed her father, who regrets nothing.

Years later, a reply arrives. An alien who calls itself a pacifist warns her: don't answer, or its world will find Earth. Ye answers anyway and offers to help conquer the planet.

In 1982, Ye is teaching astrophysics when Evans tracks her down, and she confirms she has made contact with someone beyond Earth. On his ship, Judgment Day, she learns that this civilization has been trying to reach her. It's the start of the movement she will lead decades later.

In the present, her daughter Vera kills herself in Oxford. Jin Cheng, one of Vera's former students, visits Ye and leaves with a virtual reality headset that seems to have been Vera's. Undercover at a ceremony of the movement, Jin watches Ye reveal herself as its leader. Police raid the building and Ye is arrested, warning that the San-Ti are on their way. Questioned by Da Shi, she says the San-Ti let her be caught because she's no longer useful to them.

After Judgment Day is destroyed, Ye hears the San-Ti's recording, baffled by human deception, and is shaken. She understands what they really want, yet still accepts the conquest. Da Shi releases her under watch. Ye returns to the ruins of Red Coast, where Tatiana has been sent to kill her. She doesn't resist and dies looking at the Sun.

In Three-Body, the 2023 Chinese series, Ye Wenjie is played by Chen Jin and Wang Ziwen at different stages of her life. Her story stays close to the book: the one who finds her is researcher Wang Miao, helped by detective Shi Qiang, and the daughter who dies is named Yang Dong.

In Liu Cixin's books, Ye Wenjie appears in The Three-Body Problem, which is set entirely in China. There her daughter is named Yang Dong; Netflix renamed her Vera Ye and moved the present-day story to London.